THAMES QUESTIONABLE FOR WYOMING

Back problems continue to trouble San Diego State’s starting point guard

We are approaching three weeks since Xavier Thames first felt a twinge in his lower back in practice, tried to play two days later against Cal State Bakersfield, reached back for a pass, felt a sharper twinge in his back and hobbled off. And he doesn’t seem to be getting better.

The San Diego State junior point guard — the guy Jamaal Franklin calls “our general” — pulled up lame again in practice Thursday and has been downgraded to questionable again by coach Steve Fisher with a road game looming at Wyoming on Saturday. Fisher said Thames would see a doctor again and they’d make a decision about whether he can remain a day-to-day prospect or needs to shut it down temporarily.

Thames sat out the conference opener last week at Fresno State, then returned to the starting lineup three days later and had 14 points in 31 minutes against Colorado State. In Wednesday’s 82-75 loss to UNLV, he started but was clearly out of sorts — finishing with no points (0 of 5 shooting) and no assists in 25 minutes for the 15th-ranked Aztecs.

Fisher played him only eight minutes in the second half and not at all over the final 5:53, opting to go with freshman Winston Shepard at the point.

“I don’t think X was X, physically,” Fisher said in the postgame news conference. “He would never want to use that as a reason, but I don’t think he was himself.”

That assessment was confirmed when Fisher watched the game film.

“In watching the tape, he was not moving, especially at the defensive end, the way he’s accustomed to moving,” Fisher said. “I’m concerned about it. I’m concerned that we not only have him but have him at peak efficiency.”

Fisher has been relying on the advice of doctors and trainer Tom Abdenour, but also Thames.

“He needs to be candid with me, to say: ‘It is bothering me,’ ” Fisher said. “Everybody wants to play, but sometimes you’re better off, if you’re playing hurt, not to be playing. We’d love for X to be out there. He’s a great young guy and great player for us. We need him. But we need him healthy.”

Going small

The game turned in the final 2½ minutes, when UNLV missed shots on back-to-back-to-back possessions but got the offensive rebound and scored against an Aztecs lineup that essentially consisted of five perimeter players: Shepard, Chase Tapley, Franklin, JJ O’Brien and James Rahon.

On the bench was DeShawn Stephens, who had been poked in the eye with 5:20 to go but was cleared to return, along with fellow posts Skylar Spencer and James Johnson.

“Yeah, you always second guess,” Fisher said. “You say, ‘Should we have Skylar in? Should we have had a big guy in there to have a chance to rebound one of those balls?’ You always do that … I mean, I could have put a big in, hurt or not hurt, if we had chosen to do that. We chose to go with the group that we had out there, that had done a good job getting us back (in the game).”

The rotation

Fisher has always been a proponent of an eight-man rotation, particularly during the conference season, and the odd men out have been Johnson and Dwayne Polee. Johnson played two minutes in the overtime win against Colorado State; neither played against UNLV.

Polee was the preseason co-newcomer of the year in the Mountain West. Johnson, a four-star prep prospect out of Elsinore High, became eligible in mid-December after transferring from Virginia.

“I wish that I could find a way to get them in,” Fisher said. “That’s on me. I’ve got to say, ‘OK, are we going to go one deeper? Are we going to play one more?’ In the last two games, I haven’t done that.

“But I’ve also told them, ‘You have to stay engaged, be engaged. You don’t know when your name’s going to be called. You have to be ready to go.’ ”